banner1

2015年12月20日日曜日

In the beginning of December, the festival called Kami Akari (神竹灯) held at Hodaka shrine (穂高神社) in Azumino city.

Kami akari means "Lights of god".

The candles are present from the god in far mountain, Sobo yama mountain in Takeda city, Oita prefecture. The god's name is Toyotama hime (豊玉姫).

Oita prefecture is in Kyushu island, the south island in Japan.

This festival had started five years ago, and there are 8,000 lamps in the shrine this year.
As I wrote in past article in my blog, the people have relationships with Kyushu island.
The ancestor came from Kyushu island.

2015年12月13日日曜日

When eating Japanese food, you may be see green paste added to plates.
They are called "Wasabi (わさび/山葵)".

Wasabi, Japanese horseradish needs a lot of clean water.
There are many wasabi farms in Japan, and there are 3 famous places.
Hikimi in Shimane prefecture, Utogi in Shizuoka prefecture, and Azumino in Nagano prefecture.

I went to Azumino, Daiou Wasabi-en (大王わさび園).
Azumino is a largest wasabi producing place in Japan.

As wasabi is pastel green color when eating, but it is root vegetable.
It looks like this after harvested.

After peeling coats, grate them and it becomes commonly seen wasabi.

This day was cloudy cold day, but can see inside of the farm.
Clean water streams could seen every where in this farm.

Stream are all spring water from Japan Alps.
120,000 tons of water springs water goes through this farm everyday.
This volume of water is same as 230000 people's using a day!!

The leaves of wasabi.

As this place was also famous for ancient king.
He was said so huge and strong.
There were small shrine and sandal for him.

As he was too strong, central king of Japan in that age have on him, and sent large forces to this land. The king of Azumino fought bravery, but got killed at last.

People lives here still remember and enshrines him.

The caves were here and could get inside.

Inside of the cave was like this.

Small shrine was on large rocks.

This day may be the last which I could see red leaves of this year.

The baby wasabis.

There were statue of wasabi.
The ice cream which this boy eating is wasabi flavor.

2015年12月6日日曜日

As feudal government in Edo era closed the country from abroad for few hundred years, Christianity were also stopped in Japan.

When the Meiji-era started, the Christianity also restarted.

In Meiji-mura, some Churches also had removed from several places in Japan.
As earthquakes often occurs in Japan, most of old the buildings in Japan were made with flexible woods. If the buildings are built with stones and rocks, they may can't let the power of quakes, and will broke down. Flexible woods preferred and used for buildings in past Japan.
(Technology had advanced and now we can use concretes and cements for buildings.)

The churches in Meiji-era seemed that built using both woods and concretes.

St. Francis Xavier's Cathedral (ザビエル天主堂), was built in 1890, in Kyoto.
Outer wall was built with bricks, and inner roofs and pillars were woods.

I sometimes saw the churches built with stones and woods in Europe, so I felt that it is not special building. If I have a chance to meet people from Europe countries, I would like to ask about it.

The frames of stained glasses were also made with woods.
Thinking of intensity, I think the churches in Europe may uses steels here.

Appearance of this church is like this.
It reminded me Sacré-Cœur chapel in Montmartre, Paris. (Only the color resemble, though...)

There were writings in Latin? or French? in the entrance, and could't read them.

The next church, St. John's Church (聖ヨハネ教会堂), may be unique building.

In the explanation, it is said that first floor was built with bricks, second and third floor were built with woods.

Earthquake is really annoying and scary thing....

My first impression was that this building is little looks like Tokyo station.

I would like to introduce usual days in Japan using pictures.

I love travel both inside and outside of Japan.
But now, as I'm an office worker, its difficult to go far places. In this situation, I do internet and see beautiful pictures everyone takes. If the pictures were place I had visited, they may reminds me the memories how the place was fun, the site was beautiful, the people was nice, and somethig like that. If the pictures where never visited, I dreams of going there, and sometimes become those motive for going the place. I will upload pictures and blogs those who have near thougts as me.
I'm glad if my pictures and blogs uploaded makes you happy.